Washington Capitals: Breaking down what went wrong in 2021

The Washington Capitals 2021 season ended in disappointing fashion and we are now in the middle of an offseason full of questions. The biggest question of all besides the obvious two are how did we even get here?

The Caps were clearly the oldest team in the NHL and it showed throughout the year. While it worked to their advantage in terms of veteran experience it didn’t work against a young, pesky, Boston Bruins team that exposed the Caps in every facet of their game. It wasn’t just age but injuries to their core that did them in. Brian MacLellan said in his end of season Zoom press conference that the team simply “ran out of gas”.

Star players did not play like star players. Evgeny Kuznetsov, Nicklas Backstrom, and John Carlson did not show up. For Backstrom, it was his worst playoff performance in a long time.

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Many of the Caps players are on the wrong side of 30 and there’s no telling when the window will have been fully closed. Many fans think it’s already shut but Brian MacLellan doesn’t believe so. What he will do this offseason will tell us a lot about the path this team will look to go.

If your name wasn’t Alex Ovechkin, Nic Dowd, or Garnet Hathaway, you were quiet or invisible in the playoffs. We can make an exception for Carl Hagelin as he was a member of the Caps killer fourth line that did their best to try and shut down Boston’s “perfection line” as best they can.

The Caps power play was great throughout the regular season as it finished ranked third in the NHL. But in the first round series against the Boston Bruins, that power play attack went a combined 3 for 21 in the five game series. In Game 5 they had three chances in the game’s first 22 minutes but came up empty on each one.

Backstrom, who led the team in scoring during the regular season, said in an article by Ben Raby of the Caps Radio Network and WTOP:

"“That’s obviously an area that we should have been better at and have to take advantage especially with this many opportunities. It usually doesn’t happen in the playoffs (on the power play’s lack of execution) but this year it did.”"

The Caps will look to fix a bunch of things over the offseason and retool their roster for a chance at another run at the playoffs and hopefully beyond.